On Wednesday night (2 September 2020), it was indicated in MOH’s daily report that “41 cases have been removed from the count of total confirmed cases as they were verified to be negative for COVID-19 following further investigations.” No further information was provided, and we all went
Today, we finally know what happened.
41 COVID-19 Cases Removed From List Due to Administrative Errors Over The Past Few Months
Today, it’s revealed that the removal of the 41 cases is due to “administrative errors”.
The Health Ministry told CNA that “most of these cases had been added to the case count over the past few months due to administrative errors.”
But what kind of “errors” could’ve affected the total count?
These were wrongly recorded or duplicated entries, or those that were reclassified following laboratory investigations and clinicians’ assessment.
They added, “Corrective action had been taken early on in the management of all these cases, and all necessary public health actions had been taken.
“As such none of the cases had been exposed to risk of infection due to their initial classification.”
They are now aligning the administrative records and correcting the case numbers.
As of today (5 September 2020), the total number of confirmed cases in Singapore stands at 56,982.
Errors in the Past
In July, a student in Jurong West Secondary School was wrongly diagnosed—she was deemed “positive” after a swab test as she was a close contact with a fellow student from her school, but it turned out that someone in a lab has accidentally labelled her sample with a COVID-19 patient’s sample.
In May, 33 people were tested “positive” for COVID-19 but they turned out to be false positives due to “an apparatus calibration issue for one of its test kits” in a lab. The issue has since been resolved.
Lest you think taking a swab test is akin to using a pregnancy kit, you might want to watch this video about the two types of COVID-19 (also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more informative videos!):